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MoviePass is Tracking Your Location Before and After Movies

Still totally worth it.

Yeah, I'm not sure what about me stopping at the grocery store or Shake Shack is gonna make me feel uneasy about MoviePass knowing what I do after I go to the movies. Or before I go to the movies. Or ever

Don't be tracking me between 4 and 5. That's Willie's time!

DarkImbecile wrote:MoviePass is Tracking Your Location Before and After Movies

Still totally worth it.

I'd wager every app you have is doing this.

Why only the apps I have?

Apparently their tracking has also weeded out some subscribers who were buying a ticket and re-selling it, or buying a ticket just to use the bathroom.

And my habit is to power off my phone during films, do they weed me out too?

I guess you'll find out.

My question - which the article doesn't bring up, even though it's an obvious question - is when the app is actually tracking me. If I go into the privacy settings on my phone, I have three options for the MoviePass app for sharing my location: 1) Never, 2) While Using the App, and 3) Always.

I've always had mine set to "While Using the App", and obviously I'm OK with it finding out where I am when I'm checking in for a movie, which is the only time I ever have the app open. And obviously people should expect the app to track them if they have that option set to "Always".

But if it's tracking me when I'm telling it not to, that's messed up. It doesn't appear that it's doing that, however, since it doesn't show that the app has accessed my location in the last 24 hours (I last used it to check into a movie about this time yesterday).

And I'd also add: if this article is about how MoviePass is tracking people when people allow them to do so, then it's a stupid-ass article.

A UK equivalent/offshot called cPass is taking registrations for their waiting list, offering one film a day from any of the major cinema chains for £9.95 a month...

... except none of the major cinema chains have even heard of it and are now exploring legal action to get their logos removed from the website.

This rundown of "what we know so far" sounds even more dodgy.

Whoa: MoviePass adds Landmark Theaters

I'm already seeing my local Landmark theaters listed with active showtimes when I pull up the app. Game changer.

That's huge for Philly people; if I still lived there, I don't know that I would have subscribed before now if I hadn't been able to use it at the Ritz theaters that swallowed so much of my disposable income from for the latter half of the 2000s.

We have the Roxy now, which is a small two-screen theater that tows the line between indies and blockbusters relatively well, and Bryn Mawr Film Institute has expanded to four screens. But yes, certain stuff only comes to the three Ritz theaters, and this is hugely awesome for us

Yes, very happy, I’m seeing the Century Centre listed here in Chicago. It’s actually not a theatre I like very much, but they get a fair number of exclusives so it’s a big deal.

Okay, now I'll bite. Landmark means now all the theatres I go to are covered

domino harvey wrote:Okay, now I'll bite. Landmark means now all the theatres I go to are covered

Same and same -- especially considering the (newest) absurdly low price point.

Wow. I guess I have to get MoviePass now.

Edit: And I did. Only bummer is my local Landmark doesn't do E-ticketing so I can't start using it this weekend.

The fact that they have Videology, Syndicated, and Nitehawk onboard in NYC is impressive.

It works the other way around - the MoviePass is just a regular MasterCard connected to the service, so a theater or theater chain would have to go out of their way to not be “onboard”

Exactly — the CEO of Living Room Theaters here in Portland has been vocally anti-MoviePass in at least two news articles, and claimed in one of them that he tried to get his theater removed after he found out about it. But it's still listed in the app and you can still use it just like anywhere else (presumably: I haven't actually tried it yet because I'm not a fan of the theater, despite their unique programming).

There are curiously a couple of indie theaters here that aren't listed, Cinemagic and the Moreland, and I wonder if they're just so low-key that MoviePass hasn't even noticed their existence. Otherwise, all the independent/art-house theaters here are currently on board, and they get most of my MoviePass business as I try to avoid the chains whenever I can. They will also be my breaking point if I ever hear MP has tried to strong-arm their way into a cut of these theaters' sales (especially considering a couple of them are non-profits).

Kirkinson wrote:Exactly — the CEO of Living Room Theaters here in Portland has been vocally anti-MoviePass in at least two news articles, and claimed in one of them that he tried to get his theater removed after he found out about it. But it's still listed in the app and you can still use it just like anywhere else (presumably: I haven't actually tried it yet because I'm not a fan of the theater, despite their unique programming).

There are curiously a couple of indie theaters here that aren't listed, Cinemagic and the Moreland, and I wonder if they're just so low-key that MoviePass hasn't even noticed their existence. Otherwise, all the independent/art-house theaters here are currently on board, and they get most of my MoviePass business as I try to avoid the chains whenever I can. They will also be my breaking point if I ever hear MP has tried to strong-arm their way into a cut of these theaters' sales (especially considering a couple of them are non-profits).

There's got to be some centralized movie-time listings service MoviePass uses, so if a theater doesn't list there, it won't appear. The Castro Theater in SF, for example, isn't listed but another local indie, the Roxie, is for most of their showtimes, though not some special screenings/double features, while another second-run theater in Oakland, The New Parkway, seems to come and go from the service (which is consistent with their otherwise rather haphazard internet presence—I can imagine someone just sometimes forgets to "push" their showtimes to whatever service is used).

I know for a fact they’ve forced themselves onto certain local indie theaters around here, and those same theaters have made unsuccesful efforts to get themselves removed.

“Forced themselves” in what way? What exactly do you mean by that?

That the theaters never agreed to be party to this scheme to siphon off their profits that have been doing just fine?